Wednesday, 14 August 2013

Ramen Ikkyu - Haymarket - Sydney, Australia.

Ramen Ikkyu

I have finally made it to the second Japanese ramen place that has recently opened. I contemplated on whether to go considering I just had Japanese ramen two days in a row which in my books is a lot. For *cough* research purposes I decided on trying Ramen Ikkyu after hearing positive feedback from those who have already been and some quoting it as being ‘delicious’. I had a very early dinner just after 5pm as class was at 6pm and there was no one in line. Lucky me! I’ve read and seen pictures that the queues can be long during lunch and dinner peak times. So do get there earlier and beat that rush if you can.

I was in the process of taking a picture of the front while the service lady was greeting me as you can see from the photo above. How awkward. She was so friendly though and showed me how to order through their electronic ordering system – The Ipad. You choose what you want by scrolling through the Ipad and then once you know what you want to order, you press the buttons and follow the prompts. Then you pay the service lady. They also had rice rolls on the counter which contained egg and char sew for one dollar! I was about to buy one but stopped myself considering I was going to have a big bowl of ramen.

Menu is limited with only 8 options in three different types of stock including salt, soy or miso with an assorted range of ramen toppings to choose from. They also have daily specials. The ramen is pricey for food court price standards and costs a few more dollars than Ramen Hakata-Maru but this isn’t stopping the flock of people going to try out their ramen. They also offer FREE Kaedama – Additional order of only noodles! Yes, I said FREE. I guess they could be charging more cause they are offering this.

A range of condiments. I added dried chill flakes to my ramen.

I had the ‘Tokyo (Shoyu) Ramen ($10.50)’ with additional ‘Sweet Corn Topping ($0.50)’. A soy based soup made from specially blended soy sauce and topped with black fungus, half an egg, beansprouts. shallots, thick slices of pork, lots of bamboo shoots and dried seaweed sheets. Those that have high attention to detail may have noticed that the dried seaweed sheet is missing from mine. I asked for it without as I don’t like dried seaweed and when it sits and soaks in the soup, it releases a seaweed flavour.

I found the soup and noodles to be similar to the ramen from Gumshara Ramen but with the stock slightly less thick. It was only filled half-way and I’m the person who really likes their soup so the lack of soup was one of the negatives. The egg was overcooked and was no longer creamy, gooey or runny like how it should be. This may have been because I went during non-peak times so the lack of turnover may have meant that they left their cooked eggs from lunch. However, the pork was thick and slightly fatty and melted in the mouth.

I had high expectations prior to coming here but it just wasn’t the perfect bowl of ramen for me. The ramen is really good here and it hit the spot but I much prefer the ramen from Ramen Hakata-Maru in terms of their flavour and cooking technique used.

I will be returning to try out their other ramen to see whether it will be any different from my first time there.